A day ahead of a crucial meeting of regulators in Basel that aims to decide exactly how much more capital banks will need to hold in future, the Federal Association of German banks, or BdB, warned again that new and overzealous measures could derail the economy by making it more difficult for banks to lend.

"Whoever goes too far here will jeopardise the economic recovery and the positive developments on the labour market," the BdB's deputy chairman Hans-Joachim Massenberg said in a statement.

German regulators will attend the meeting Tuesday as the only ones who didn't sign up in July to a list of principles on how the new binding international standards on capital and liquidity--dubbed Basel III--would be calculated.

At that time, representatives from the Deutsche Bundesbank and Bafin had witheld their approval because of the lack of detail in most of the principles, and specifically because they wanted better recognition of "silent deposits," a form of capital popular with German banks, in the new standards.

Indications from Basel have suggested that the new capital rules will force banks to ensure that over 80% of their total "core tier 1" capital is made up of paid-up equity and retained earnings. By contrast, silent deposits account for up to half of German banks' capital, playing a particularly important role with its unlisted regional and local banks.